1. Field of Invention.
The present disclosure relates to production of gold-copper nanocubes and, more particularly, to a one-step formation process for substantially monodisperse gold-copper nanocubes.
2. Description of Related Art.
Multiple applications may be facilitated by gold and gold-containing alloy nanocrystals (NCs) with cubic morphologies because such nanocrystals have extraordinary crystalline and plasmonic properties. For instance, biomedical applications may be facilitated by cubic gold or gold-silver alloy nanocages. These nanocages may be promising candidates for photocatalysis as nanoreactors. Monodisperse cubic nanocrystals may also be used as building blocks for self-assembly. This is a significant step toward controlled design of novel nanostructure materials and devices.
Gold nanocubes may be produced using a number of methods and techniques, including but not limited to, seed-mediated methods, electrochemical techniques and polyol methods. On the other hand, production methods and techniques for gold-containing alloy nanocubes with cubic morphologies have been essentially limited to galvanic replacement reactions.
In order to fully realize the above-referenced applications, a facile, reliable synthetic protocol, may be useful particularly where it has better productivity, monodispersity, and perfection of cube and size control. In addition, while sub-10 nanometer nanocubes may have exhibited significant improvements of activity and selectivity compared to their larger counterparts, the prior art does not appear to include sub-10 nanometer gold or gold-containing nanocubes with cubic morphologies produced in solution conditions. This is possibly attributable to the fact that shape-control of nanocubes is a kinetically-controlled process as opposed to a thermodynamically-controlled process. Therefore, shape changes may result where adjustments are made to any synthetic parameter to reduce the size.
Nanoparticles can come in a different of different shapes, including but not limited to spheres, plates, rods, cubes. However, cubes with sharp edges have been shown to have broad-ranging applications. Accordingly, shape control of nanocubes is desired. There is a need for shape control of nano-objects.
Plus, gold has a large average surface self-diffusion distance of 3-12 nanometers. Because of this, recent prior art e.g., studies by Haick and others suggest that, it is unlikely to produce gold nanocubes with less than 25-27 nanometer edge sizes in a solution condition.
There is a need for gold-containing nanocubes with smaller edge sizes.